Posted on 04/01/2011 5:02:33 PM PDT by Red Steel
Real estate mogul Donald Trump said Thursday that the US is being ripped off by the rest of the world, but he would change if he were president.
"If I decide to run, we are not going to have the kinds of problems we have now because I won't be taken advantage of by the rest of the world," Trump told FOX News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.
"We are being ripped off by the rest of the world to the tune of trillions of dollars," Trump said. "I am not talking about the old word, billions. I am talking about the new word, trillions."
Trump says he knows just how to fix things, starting with China.
"Twenty-five percent tax on China, unless they behave," he said.
"You're threatening China with a trade bill. Twenty-five percent tariff. That's big," O'Reilly retorted.
"No, they're threatening us.
(Excerpt) Read more at myfoxmemphis.com ...
Liberals have got to love it when they tax us, regulate us, and forcibly unionize us to the point of noncompetitiveness, and then a lot of those on our side turn and blame freedom.
Donald went broke once, I can see why. But I do agree with him on the recent "Obama is a Muslim" declaration.
Tariffs were good enough to support the federal government for 130 years. Ditch all federal taxes and fund the government via tariffs.
Nice that he’s pro-American, but he’s suggesting curing the symptom instead of the root cause.
The root cause of our problems is the dismal outlook for business in the U.S., not currency manipulation.
The dismal outlook is made up of the following:
a) unions
b) big-business cronyism and small business no influence
c) lack of spending control by government which mathmatically requires future tax rate increases
d) communist-controlled public schools which turn out adult citizens who are ignorant of and virulently anti-business
e) special-interest-driven environmentalism
All of these combined are far too much for capital formation to overcome and capital is flowing outside the U.S., in spite of the long-term fact that the undermining of the U.S. will result in complete breakdown of legitimate private-property rights free enterprise and therefore a collapse in all investments in advanced economies.
A high tariff on import of Chinese manufactured goods will only allow the failed paradigm that we have been sliding closer towards since the 1970’s to last a bit longer.
We need to schoolmaster’s harsh stick of simply no allowing the import of manufactured goods, only raw materials.
Manufacturing jobs will then return out of necessity. However, if the above obstacles are not ALSO removed, the U.S. would suffer the high prices that those obstacles entail.
The Washington lobbying community would be utterly difficult to overcome in their opposition to these fixes, because they would require big business to do some real work.
If by some miracle these obstacles are removed and manufacturing returned, the U.S. dollar would strengthen so much that we would gain an enormous raw materials purchasing advantage over EVERY other nation. China would basically fall back into poverty, with no ability to provide jobs for it’s people by exporting manufactured goods to the U.S. and a worthless currency of their own. They would once again be desparate for U.S. dollars with which to buy oil and raw materials.
The changes that would be necessary, though, are a complete transformation of the communist-infested, cronyism-based society we now live in.
The increasing rate of gains from job displacement of whole economic sectors from a nation are temporary; once the whole sector is gone, the costs at that point are the new normal. For the nation doing the work and exporting goods, they have an artificial outside boost to their economy, as they can pay citizens with money that their citizens do not have to spend, as citizens of other nations are spending for the exported goods.
Huh! You lost me.
Donald Trump Says He Would Threaten to Tax China 25%
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Threats are not action.
In other words he would raise prices of goods sold here from China by 25%.
Nice... I thought Republicans were against taxes?
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They are. It’s better to cut red-tape than to raise tariffs.
One makes us globally competitive. The other just grows local industries that can’t compete.
Conservatives are not America-lasters. You want to cut taxes? Cut the income tax. America did just fine when it was funded by tariffs. It's the one tax that's Constitutional. (and no, the 16th amendment is and remains an unratified abomination.)
Better make ALL States right to work States where Union membership is optional..
Eliminated the income tax.. and institute the "Fair Tax" or something like that.. to fund the federal gov't..
Walmart’s CEO is already predicting serious inflation. If imports from China get hit with a 25% tariff it’s going to be way beyond serious.
I hear ya'. At the very least he's getting the eligibility issue out front and center, and kind of making it mainstream. At some point one of Oblahblah's underlings will have to address it.
That is just the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.
First, that 25% tax comes out of American pockets. If you raise the cost of Chinese products by 25%, who else pays but us. Or, you can keep on wearing those ratty drawers until you have 25% more money to pay for a new pair. Same for many, many other consumer goods. If you like the idea that most of Walmart’s prices will increase substantially, then you will love this tax, er, tariff.
Second, does he think the Chinese will not retaliate?
They would NEVER sell off US debt to create a US financial crisis. They would never dump the Dollar to create a world monetary crisis. They'd never cut rare metals exports to disrupt US high tech manufacturing. I'm sure they wouldn't enact their own tariffs on US goods, either.
Naw, they would never do that?
Here we have Trump blaming China for our lousy economy. Does ANYBODY here really believe that?
China had ZERO to do with the housing/mortgage crisis. That was home grown by Dodd, Frank, Freddie, Fanny, & Co.
China has Zero to do with unemployment. Our expat businesses didn't pack up & move to Asia because of China. They did it because doing business, especially manufacturing, in the USA is not profitable, which is over taxed & regulated. Oil workers are idle in the USA because of Obama & Co. Businesses are not hiring for the same reason.
China did not create the massive US debt, our Congress & successive Presidents did.
“The Donald” is playing the same old blame game so well loved by the Liberal, victim class. What nonsense!
Oh, on the contrary, China having plowed their billions of dollars back into treasuries depressed the benchmark for mortgage rates, artificially stimulating demand.
No money down, no credit check, no job mortgages was the stimulus for the meltdown, not China investing in America. Would you prefer they reinvest our debt somewhere else?
I’ve been a Donald fan for years. (even though he’s given financial support to some RATS in NY due to needed shmoozing)
It’s GREAT that he has his eyes on the big prize. Should make the primaries very very interesting! If he is serious, which I believe he is - with his popularity, he’s got a shot. So far, I haven’t heard anything I really didn’t agree with.
Watching BOR tonight I really liked what he said about finding Osama bin Laden. Tell Pakistan they either turn him over, or we cut off funding. I like that alot. Then he said... we should be taking care of our own (our country) first...I like that even more.
You yourself cited the potential use of debt as a cudgel, as a punitive measure. Do you think this is good? Where did China get all these dollars in the first place? Is that good?
And, lastly, if China "reinvested our debt somewhere else" it wouldn't be our debt, now would it?
The relaxing of credit standards is another matter entirely, yet another attempt at racial gerrymandering with unintended consequences. Consequences which were greatly aided by virtue of very cheap money, courtesy of China having bought so many treasuries and thereby depressing the benchmark for mortgage rates.
Sort of a trifecta, wouldn't you say? We're paying to industrialize them, they're investing dollars in treasuries to use as a weapon if we don't behave to their liking, and it's wrecked the financial system.
As for them using our debt as a cudgel, we can blame no one for that debt but ourselves. W/o the debt, there is no cudgel. The borrower is always subservient to the lender.
Whether or not China is purposefully manipulating our debt or the Dollar to their own benefit, as if everybody else including our own gov’t is not, getting into a trade war with China doesn't seems to be the smart thing to do, nor will it solve our massive problems at home.
You know, whenever I encounter a sentence such as this, I test it by inverting the parties involved, to smoke out the bias. You should try it sometime:
First, Americans have every right to spend their own money with their own best interests in mind. If that is contrary to Chinese interests, too bad.
Then, we move on to your second paragraph, and what an amazing example of an insincere attempt at turning the tables it is. You and people who agree with you are the ones advocating the trade policy that created the problem, that you brought up and pointed out yourself by the way, of China being in a position to punish us for not behaving to their liking. I blame you and people who think like you. I am not to blame. And, yes, a borrower is always subservient to the lender, that is Biblical and it is an ancient truth. Funny how you seem to want to treat this subservience as something other than a symptom of the policies you advocate.
What, exactly, would be the consequence of "getting into a trade war" with China at this juncture? Walmart would get nailed. Clothing, consumer goods, electronics. Would "the smart thing to do" be to continue down this road, deeper and deeper into subservience as you yourself termed it? Isn't that the road to serfdom? And, how does this solve any problem at all? It appears to me to hold out hope of nothing more than exacerbating these problems.
Wonder what show he is plugging.
No import of manufactred goods? Well I completely disagree with that.
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